Topps adds NBA hopefuls to Allen & Ginter
By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor
This year’s Allen & Ginter set from Topps will be the home of autographs from legendary fictional fighters named Rocky Balboa and Thunderlips as well as future baseball Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki.
It will also include four potential NBA stars.
The company revealed on Friday four more signers for the 10th edition of the retro-styled set focusing on “world’s champions” — athletes from all fields of sporting life.
The four players include Justise Winslow, a star for Duke, Kentucky’s Willie Cauley-Stein, Wisconsin’s Sam Dekker and Georgia State’s R.J. Hunter.
Other signers for this one will include ESPN’s Darren Rovell, actor Val Kilmer and hockey star Jeremy Roenick.
A preliminary checklist has not been released by the company.
Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball and Beckett Sports Card Monthly magazines. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.
These are basketball players that haven’t done anything professionally yet, and in a long reach Topps calls them “world’s champions”. It would be interesting if all four reached that level someday, however. That would make this set an amazing predictor.